...is going to happen.

Peak-oil will creep upon us, like crabs in the pot, the water temperature getting a little hotter, and a little hotter...we keep adapting..until a crisis point is reached..then, we're toast. Gasoline supplies dry up and....make your own scenario. None of them will be very pretty.

Or, the Saudis will keep camouflaging their flagging production until they can't hide it any longer, even with the cooperation of 1st world governments and mainstream media... Cantarell begins its steep decline, we can't find any immediate new sources of oil...and, BOOM, no creeping catastrophe, rather, it hits us in the face like a piano from five floors up.

Either way, things are gonna get very, very ugly. I really don't see how we avoid it now. It's just a matter of time. Short time, really. Cantarell is in decline now. Informed opinion is that Saudi production is stagnant, in spite of quite frantic efforts by Aramco to drill new wells. The North Sea is declining at nearly 20% per year.

Even if first-world oil companies, somehow, find a way to make up part of the decline from the big producers, we're still looking at something like 5-10% world oil production declines per year, in the very near future. That will be catastrophic right there. Let alone 20%. That's the apocalypse.

We're fucked, folks. And oil sands and oil shale are NOT going to save us.

I wish it were not so. I love my affluent life in La-La land. But it can't last. I see this town from downtown, a town that will be almost totally unable to function without fossil fuel for transportation, and I wonder what in HELL to do. What will any of us do?

Mitt Romney with Rove as campaign manager. They'd simply lie their way into the Presidency, just like Shrub did.

After EIGHT years of GW Bush, I'm not going to underestimate the gullibility of the American voter, not ever again.

Romney could win. The mind boggles.

Remember, he's just saying the Base wants and expects him to say. Who the hell knows what he really thinks? Does it even matter? He'd be George Bush Lite, and that thought is almost beyond comprehension.

'course, one can hope he gets the party's nomination, and then gets absolutely creamed in 2008. One can hope.

It's difficult to imagine, but Romney might actually be a better choice than Giuliani, who really scares the bejesus outta me. Even more scary: that *anyone* could vote for that guy. Anyone. I heard him speak recently, and I just cannot fathom his appeal. Even with the whole Big Daddy Hard-On thing that the GOPers love. Giuliani sounds like vengeful madman.

so, I'm betting Romney gets the nod, by a hair, over Giuliani...and that Hillary cuts him to pieces in the general...but the vote is close anyway, because so many people just cannot bring themselves to vote for her. I'll have trouble doing it...and I know it's the only choice at that point.

Hm. it's gonna be one of the most interesting elections of the last 100 years.

""I can't talk about what happened to me because it is classified"

********

so, elephantman, what do you say about this? Hmmmm? Let's hear. I want to know your reaction. What do you think?

you're so good at straw-men, and changing the subject, and ignoring anything that makes you look stupid, let's hear what you think about this statement. That'll tell us exactly what kind of person you are.

What slays me about all such invasion stories, from bodysnatchers to Stephen King's catastrophically messy and nonsensical Dreamcatcher, is that if a superior alien culture (technologically superior, that is, it'd have to be, to get its members across light-years to our little blue globe), wanted to take over our planet, it'd be easy as pie, and we'd never know a thing.

they'd just observe carefully, take a few discreet samples, do a little research, and, viola! they'd seed the entire planet with a toxin or a virus that would kill us all, quickly and relatively painlessly. 'course, if they discovered they liked the taste of human (unlikely, but you never know), they'd keep a few of us around for breeding stock.

But the conquest of Planet Earth would be relatively quick, painless, and completely non-violent, in the sense that there'd be no guns, no bombs, no death-rays. Just a little genetically engineered virus, or something similar.

It'd be the only reasonable way to go. All this taking over human bodies is ridiculous... all such films are metaphors for our own unconscious rage and fear. Aliens would accomplish the entire business much more efficiently..if taking this valuable piece of real-estate was their goal.

(an aside: one of the things that is so enormously frustrating about the human alpha-male's propensity for destroying the planet in his mindless quest for domination, of anything and everything, is that this kind of planet is probably quite rare in our galaxy....the number of variables that had to be exactly right to put this planet where it is, the way it is, is mind-boggling. We're fucking with one valuable chunk of rock..I wish we could see that, as a species...it's the only one we'll ever get, unless we figure out how to terraform Mars..and even at that, Mars would never be a nice as Earth).